Farewell My Ovaries

by Wendy Harmer

  She always shuddered to hear the marriage vows people came up with. She had stood on beaches at sunset, in band rotundas at dawn, while two young hopefuls had parroted lines they must have found in Hallmark greeting cards: ‘You are my everything. You are my universe. You are the sun that rises and also sets. I will be honest with you in everything I do.’

  Honesty. Now there was a highly overrated marriage vow. Did you really want to share a life with someone who was honest? Yes, you do look fat in that dress. Yes, I do wish you would shut up and go to sleep. Yes, I have heard that story before. No, that is not a funny joke!

  And then there was the vow Claire hated most of all: ‘You are my best friend’. She recalled that Rose had said that very thing about Dermott on Saturday night: ‘You are my best friend in the world.’ Well, as Claire had controversially explained to Charlie more than once, she already had a best friend. Her name was Meg. And if she was going to be honest with anyone it would be her. Charlie could take the role of husband and all that entailed, but the vacancy of best friend had already been filled for the past twenty years. As for the role of lover . . .

  Of course Claire knew that while she could mount a case for lying about the little things in a relationship—lies which shielded your partner from hurt—there was no way she could do the same for taking a lover. There had also been a vow of fidelity at her wedding, which she had made in good faith. And while she could imagine taking Charlie back after a drunken fumble with some scrubber, what she was planning was premeditated adultery. There was a world of difference between the two. Shut up Claire, she said to herself. You think too much.

  ‘. . . so I’ve said he can have a third of the balcony for a tool bench and that’s it . . .’ Her mother was warming to her theme and showed no signs of slowing up.

  Claire reached for the handbrake. ‘Can you put Dad on?’

  ‘Hello there, darling.’ Her father’s voice instantly calmed her. ‘How’s that car of yours going?’ he asked.

  Claire smiled to hear this. It was his standard conversational gambit. Something she and her brother and sister always laughed about when they got together. ‘Dad, I’ve run off with an al-Qaeda operative to Iraq!’ ‘Oh yes, well he sounds a nice chap. What sort of car does he drive?’

  It was a good hour later when Claire finally managed to hang up the phone on her parents. It was now 11 pm. Too late to ring Connor? Too early? She decided it was probably about the right time. He would understand that if she was calling at this time of night it wasn’t to order an ornamental plant for the patio.

  Claire poured another drink, lit a cigarette and dialled his number on the mobile.

  It rang.

  The world turned. The blood rushed out from her head in a sickening tide and then rushed back in again.

  It rang some more.

  Her stomach fell to her knees and bounced back up into her throat.

  ‘Yeah, Connor here.’ It was him. There was that unmistakable throaty purr.

  ‘Hi. It’s Claire Wallace . . . you probably don’t remember . . .’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember. Hello, Claire. I’ve been thinking about you.’

  ‘Have you? I’ve been thinking about you too.’

  ‘I believe we have some unfinished business,’ he said with a sexy growl.

  ‘I believe we have.’

  Claire stubbed out her cigarette and walked quickly with the phone out to the deck. She could already feel the heaviness in her pelvis, the stormy build-up before the wet. She reminded herself that she would take this slowly, purposefully.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘So let’s just take this slowly.’ He was echoing her thoughts.

  There was no reason for Claire to think she was in safe hands, but that’s exactly what she did think. She remembered his hands very vividly. For some reason she felt she could say whatever was on her mind.

  ‘Where are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Let me describe the scene for you. I am right this minute standing on a balcony looking at the waves rolling in at Kirra. You know Kirra? Just up from Surfers?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘There’s a nice swell and a full moon. I’ve had a smoke. I’m nursing a Jack Daniels and Coke and I had the feeling that someone was going to call me tonight and change my life. And here you are.’

  ‘Really?’ was all Claire could muster. She felt as if she was in some sort of trance.

  ‘In fact, it gets even weirder. I was just reading this article about this biologist named Rupert Sheldrake. He’s got this new book out called The Sense of Being Stared At. You heard of it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, did you ever have that feeling where you were thinking about someone and they just called, out of the blue?

  ‘I guess we’ve all had that experience at some time.’

  ‘Yeah, we have. And what he says is that it’s not just coincidence. He says human beings can ‘feel’ when someone’s staring at them. He reckons that the act of looking at someone is a two-way process. That it’s about projection and absorption at the same time, and maybe humans have a psychic connection or telepathy we’re unaware of.’

  This is all very intriguing, thought Claire. And not at all what she was expecting to hear from him.

  ‘Maybe we are all linked by a collective unconscious,’ he went on. ‘Maybe at some level we’re all thinking the same thoughts.’

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Claire asked cheekily.

  ‘I sincerely hope so.’ And then they laughed in two-part harmony. Connor sounded like he laughed a lot.

  ‘Mummy, I need a drink of water.’

  Madeline had wandered out to her mother. Maybe she had woken because some ‘psychic connection’ had told her that her mother was on the phone. Maybe it had also told her there was a disturbance in the family force field.

  ‘Oh, um . . . hold on a minute.’ Claire threw down the phone, got the water and steered her daughter back to bed. Picking up the phone again she said breathlessly: ‘Sorry, that was my daughter Madeline.’

  ‘You’ve got two daughters?’

  ‘Well, Rose is my stepdaughter and Madeline, who’s six, is mine.’

  ‘Ah, now I get it. I knew you weren’t old enough to be Rose’s mother.’

  ‘I would hope not. Rose is twenty-nine!’ Claire had already made a pact with herself to hide nothing. She decided to ask the question she knew she shouldn’t and braced herself for the reply. ‘So, how old do you think I am?’

  ‘Fucking hell! Do I get a lifeline?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Can I phone a friend?’

  ‘You cannot.’

  ‘OK then, for one million dollars, I would say that you are . . . um . . . thirty-eight.’

  ‘Bad luck. You’ll have to take the half-mill. I’m forty-five.’

  ‘Well, well, well. Forty-five.’ Claire strained to hear anything in his voice which sounded like disappointment. There was nothing.

  ‘Right then, Claire, now it’s your turn. For the family pass to Dreamworld, how old am I? Go easy now.’

  Claire was sure of herself here and gave an instant response. ‘You are twenty-six.’

  ‘Who’s a bit out of practice then? I’m thirty-three.’

  Thirty-three! Claire realised she had fallen into the trap of the middle aged. She looked at policemen in the street now and thought they should be at high school. She looked at women presenting the weather on TV and thought their mothers would be waiting outside to pick them up in the family station wagon. Thirty-three! This changed things considerably, she thought. Although, when she thought about it some more, she couldn’t see why.

  ‘Hello . . . hello? You’re shocked, aren’t you? I’m too old for you, huh? I can dress up in my old school uniform if you like. I’ve still got my blazer and tie.’

  ‘No, no . . . it’s just that you look younger.’

  ‘For a bloke who spends so much time in the surf, you mean? It’s my skincare regime. Every time I come
out of the water I lie down with seaweed on my face for half an hour.’

  Claire giggled. Connor was smart, funny and, she recalled, unbelievably handsome. Her nervousness gave way to something a whole lot more interesting.

  In the next twenty minutes Claire and Connor learned a few more things about each other. They had both grown up in Sydney and both knew Dermott. They both loved Steve Martin, they both loved Thai food and they were both in love with someone else.

  ‘Her name is Anna. She’s a marine biologist. She’s over in Brazil at the moment working with the Surfrider Foundation. We’re getting married next March.’

  Claire actually found this a comfort. She at least knew that whatever had happened, and would happen between them, would remain a secret. The final box of her questionnaire had just been ticked.

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘there’s twelve years between us and about a thousand miles. Well, at least I think there is. Please tell me you’re ringing me from the Kirra Beach pub.’

  ‘Sydney. Dover Heights to be exact. Downtown Vaucluse.’

  ‘Hmm, very impressive, but disappointing too. Can you see the moon from where you are?’

  ‘I’m looking straight at it.’

  ‘Describe it to me.’

  ‘Well, it’s big and round and—’

  ‘Come on! A woman named Claire should be able to describe the moon.’

  Clair de Lune was of course one of Claire’s favourite pieces of piano music. Claude Debussy, if she remembered correctly. Her grandmother was named after it.

  ‘Alright, alright. I’m standing here looking at the ocean. Well, that’s not quite true—it’s the Tasman Sea. I’m barefoot and the frangipanis are promising to burst. And . . . and I’m remembering you. I’m remembering that you smell of violets and coconut.’

  ‘And I’m thinking of your smell too. Do you know what you smell of?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You smell of sex. You smell like some luscious exotic piece of fruit which should be sucked dry. You smell fucking gorgeous. And if you were here now I’d suck and fuck you all night long. Until you couldn’t stand up.’

  Claire couldn’t stand up now. She went inside the house and lay back in an armchair. Parting her legs she slipped a finger inside herself. Yes, she was now wet.

  ‘So what now?’ he asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Claire, drawing in her breath, ‘I have a plan.’

  ‘Does it include me?’

  ‘Yes it does. But only for twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, it’s like this. I am forty-five years old, I am a mother, I am married. But I think I deserve you and I want you for one night and one day. As a sort of present to myself. And in that one night and day you and I are going to have the best sex of our lives. Then we are never going to see each other again.’

  ‘Phew! Well, it’s definitely a plan. And I am a sucker for a woman with a plan. But what if we both want more?’

  ‘That’s the rule. There is no more.’

  ‘And I love a woman with rules as well. So, when’s this all going to happen?’

  ‘When we decide. We’ve got a lot of planning to do first because we have to make this the best night ever. Any questions?’

  ‘Just one. How can it be the best night ever if we plan it? We didn’t plan to meet. We didn’t plan to end up in that cubicle together.’

  ‘There’re no promises or guarantees apart from the fact that I promise to be there and I guarantee I will amaze you and you will never forget it as long as you live. So what do you think?’

  ‘I’m in. I mean, for fuck’s sake, of course I’m in.’

  ‘Right. Well, tomorrow night I am going to ring you again at eleven o’clock and I want you to start thinking about the best sex you ever had and why it was the best. And our first category will be music.’

  ‘Music?’

  ‘Music to have sex by.’

  ‘Do I win anything if I get it right?’

  ‘You win me. Me licking the salt from your chest. Me taking your hard cock into my mouth. You get all of me—anyway you want me.’

  Claire couldn’t quite believe she’d had the courage to say this, with the lights on, over the phone. She waited for his reaction and could only hear him breathing heavily. As he started to speak, she cut him off with a quick goodbye.

  She heard him call, ‘No, wait,’ before she turned off the phone and threw it on the couch.

  She guessed Connor would pour another drink and go to bed. She guessed he would be thinking of her as he rubbed his hard dick against the sheets. And she guessed that as he came, the salty wind would carry his groans out across the league long rollers of Kirra Beach. And she was right.

  Claire heard Charlie stumble though the darkness of their bedroom a couple of hours later. He slipped into bed beside her.

  ‘Are you awake?’ he whispered.

  Claire mumbled through her sleep that she was. Charlie heard this as his permission for sex and took Claire very slowly and quietly.

  As she orgasmed, Claire was thinking of a conch shell. Connor had his lips to her and was blowing very softly. Her whole body was hollow and reverberated with one long, low note.

  Wednesday

  The Company She Keeps

  ‘Can we have a bit more foldback in the left speaker?’

  Ellery was at the piano checking the sound for the gig. Claire and her musicians were performing that night at the Intercontinental Hotel. It was a film premiere party for the latest Hollywood blockbuster to hit Sydney and the band was playing for the first half of the night. The party-goers were supposed be A-list types, which guaranteed a couple of things. One, they would be mostly B- and C-list types. Two, they would be pissed in five minutes on cheap free champagne and wouldn’t even know there was a band playing. Top gig!

  The boys had been with Claire for seventeen years on and off. ‘On’ when Claire had a successful album going around. ‘Off’ when she didn’t. Over the years they’d had the good fortune to be more on than off. They were Ellery on piano, Mike on double bass, Zack on drums and percussion and Louie on saxophone.

  They were known as Claire Sellwyn’s band, The Company. Or Claire and Co for short. It was something of a miracle that the band had held together, considering Claire had had hot affairs with two of them and a one-night stand with a third. But in the end it was the music which was the glue. If you looked in the racks at the record stores you would find them under jazz. But Claire could sing anything. Blues, funk, swing, latin, folk, pop—even rock if she was pushed.

  Her albums had sold modestly well over the years and she was respected as a solid, professional act. Her first album in 1988, The Company She Keeps had been reviewed in the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘The Company She Keeps is a knockout set of jazz vocals, bringing freshness and vitality to the standard repertoire. Sellwyn is a sure singer with a superb, richly seductive voice, her phrasing absolutely assured. Her future seems bright.’

  As for stardom? Over the years she had become more and more content to leave that to the likes of Kylie. She had tangled with big-shot record company wankers a couple of times and didn’t like what she saw. They had plans for songwriters, stylists, a stint in the US, promotional tours. Short skirts, big hair. All too predictable. In the end Claire was happiest working the circuit—residencies at clubs and pubs and festivals, a wide variety of gigs all over the country. She saw herself as more art-house than multiplex. The one thing she had achieved was a living. Almost twenty years of supporting herself without having to get a nine-to-five job. And, as most musicians will tell you, it don’t get any better than that.

  Claire worked only occasionally these days. She didn’t have to sing for her supper anymore and would rather be home crooning a lullaby to Madeline, but she liked to keep her hand in and hoped she would be singing forever.

  All of her working life had been spent with musicians. In band rooms, buses, rehearsal rooms, sound studios and bars. And after all this time s
he liked to think she understood a bit about men. Some of their habits, which would nauseate the uninitiated, had even come to be quite endearing.

  She now understood that bodily functions were a mother lode of comic possibility; that insulting another’s physical appearance was an expression of genuine personal regard; that watching sport was not a mindless diversion, it was a deeply meditative experience; and that the penis was the unseen special guest at any male gathering and could be called upon as an independent witness to corroborate its owner’s version of events.

  ‘Alright, which one of you tone-deaf dickheads has got the room key?’ It was Zack on drums. One-night stand.

  ‘Come back, you dirtbag, we haven’t finished!’ That was Louie, who played saxophone. Affair number one.

  ‘Shut the fuck up, both of you. I’m trying to hear!’ Ellery, the piano player. Affair number two.

  Claire didn’t even hear the profanities anymore. It was just the way they communicated with each other. She had caught the habit of swearing herself and sometimes had to remind herself there were ladies present.

  She sat with Mike (the bass player) in the darkened ballroom and swigged her bottle of water. She tried once more to call Meg to rehash last night’s extraordinary events, but Meg still wasn’t answering.

  Claire had been thinking about Connor from the moment she opened her eyes this morning. In fact, she was having difficulty focusing on anything else. It was that fire of desire which had been well and truly stoked after last night’s conversation.

  ‘Mike.’

  ‘Hmm . . .’ He was busy burning holes in his polystyrene coffee cup with his cigarette butt.

  ‘I’ve got a question.’

  ‘I’ve told you a hundred times, Claire, I’m married.’

  ‘Oh shut up . . . you,’ and she pushed him playfully.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. Even if you threaten me physically. It’s not going to happen. Get used to it.’

  Claire groaned. Mike had made this joke a hundred times, maybe a thousand, over the years. It was The Company’s running gag that Claire had slept with three members of the quartet. Mike always said that he was determined she was not going to get the boxed set.